When the feast is finished, the speakers again mount the rostrum, and as usual after a good dinner, all are more disposed to merriment. Before you are a thousand people of all ages, from the gray-haired man of ninety, to the tiniest baby that ever opened its eyes to the light. You may see there a group of laughing maidens, reclining upon the grass in the shade of a spreading oak, with their gypsy hats and bright streamers, and near by a bevy of matrons, with their raven hair braided in rich tresses, and their mantles gathered in folds about their waists. The musicians fill up the interstices between the speeches with thrilling and plaintive strains, till the daylight begins to fade and the red gleam of the setting sun gilds the forest tops. Then again they form in procession, and march away. The children number about two hundred; and are you realizing all this time that they are what some people still insist upon calling savages, and maintain can never become an educated, refined and cultivated people? really believing that they are incapable of appreciating learning, the arts, Christianity, and civilization? Contending that they ought to be removed far away into the Western forests to roam for ever wild, that the white man may not trample them as he tramples the beast and the reptile in his path? The laborers have been few, far too few for this beautiful vineyard, yet they have accomplished a great work. The population is now on the increase, and schools and churches are multiplying. The people are improving in agriculture, and pretty farms and houses are beginning to dot their hills and valleys. They are becoming a Christian and social people. I have attended one or two parties, or social gatherings, at the houses of the missionaries, where there were perhaps fifty or sixty, and have seen far less comeliness and propriety of behavior among the same number of the sons and daughters of New England. Indians have remarkable tact in conforming to the customs of other people, if they choose to exercise it, and when they are fully convinced that it is best to relinquish their own peculiar habits, they adopt new ones very readily. If land speculators would let them alone, and the State would perform its whole duty, they would soon prove that the last of the Senecas is not yet, nor for a long time to come. They would become a valuable element in our political and social organization—refute the slanders, and blot out the dark pictures which historians have been wont to spread abroad concerning them. May I live to see it done, for most deeply have I learned to blush for my people. The speech from which I make the following extracts, was made by Mr. N. T. Strong. The President of the day was Henry Twoguns, the step-son of Red Jacket, and the Vice President, Dr. Wilson. The Marshal was Mr. M. H. Parker, and the bands were composed entirely of Indians.